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 Spores from space take root in San Francisco. These space flowers have only
one plan and that is to clone all human life and replace it! The box copy uses
phrases like "thrill ride" and "brilliant screenplay" to describe their flick.
They also resort to outright lies such as "all star cast" and "mesmerizing
style" to further get you to buy this movie. Several glowing quotes from a
variety of sources are also provided for your digestion. 1978, 117 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This is the second version of this material. The original was made back in
1956 and I think that you probably could accurately describe this 1978 version
as more of an update of that film that a remake of it. This version takes those
nasty body-snatching pods out of the small town environment and drops them into
the modern big city. This change allows the story to resonate with modern
audiences more than it would have otherwise. The old movie was all about the
people you knew and how maybe you didn't know them at all. That was fine in the
old days when many folks knew their banker's name and that kind of stuff, but
how many people do we know by name today? Many of us probably have neighbors
we've never even spoken to, let alone know their names or anything about them.
That's where the big city comes in. You start out with the premise that you
don't these people, that you would never know whether they were "normal" or
not. How terrifying is it to walk down the street and see all these faceless
people go by. You'd never know if they were pod people or not, until it was too
late.  The plot in this one is not too hard to follow. Spores from outer space land
in San Fran and take root there. While people sleep, they suck the life out of
them and reproduce the people exactly as they had been. Well, all except any
emotions like love and hate and fear and all that good stuff. The unfortunate
side effect is that the actual person who has been replaced shrivels up and
crumbles into husk-like heap. Hey, if you want omelets, you have to break a few
eggs. Our story focuses on a little group of folks who catch onto this little
scheme and get all uppity about it. This is where your "all star" cast comes
into play. Now, they must have had a different idea back in 1978 about what an
all-star cast comprised, but I can't believe that it would ever consist of Jeff
Goldblum, Brooke Adams, and Veronica Cartwright. How many of you are wondering
when the new Brooke Adams movie is coming out (I mean other than Ms. Adams)?
Right, I thought so. Donald Sutherland is some dude who works at the health department fishing rat
turds out of soups in fancy kitchens. If that was my job, I don't see where as
being a pod person is necessarily a step down, but Donnie soon decides that
something strange is going on. He knows that something just isn't right when he
sees a half developed double of Brooke Adams coming out of pod in the garden
luckily located right by her bedroom where she is (gasp!) sleeping. Wake up!
Wake up! My god wake up! So, Donnie's all like, "hey there's just something not
quite right about all this, but I can't put my finger on it." He confides in
head shrink Leonard Nimoy, who turns in a performance where he's coasting until
the Spock paychecks pick up again (buck up Lenoard, that first Star Trek movie
comes out next year!). Any moron could tell you that Spock has gone pod, but
Sutherland insists on blathering everything and then is shocked when Spock
double crosses him. Jeff Goldblum also double crosses Sutherland and gets
strangled for his trouble. This was a good movie, so I will give it its due. They did a good job of
conveying the complete hopelessness of our characters when it slowly (too
slowly if you ask me) sinks in that they are screwed. Watching all the people
loading all these pods into trucks destined for all parts of the country and
seeing them loaded onto ships (they didn't have Fed Ex in 1978) for worldwide
distribution was very effective. So many of these invaders from another planet
movies hamstring themselves in conveying the overwhelmingness of the invasion
by not showing how it could possibly affect anyone outside of the affected
community. How many of those movies have I seen where I sighed loudly and
wondered why the hero didn't just hop in his car and leave town. In this flick
they try to leave town, but they are foiled and by showing how widespread
everything is, it really doesn't matter even if they could get out.  It's also pretty creepy that these pod people get you while you sleep. We all
have to sleep, so it's easy to put yourself in their place and you sit there
and wonder how long could you stay awake before they got you. Then you wonder
why bother staying awake anyway, because sooner or later you'll have to sleep
and then they got you anyway. That's what the movie wants you think anyway.
According to the movie though these plant things let their vines creep up you
and inject themselves under your skin and apparently suck out your juices and
that serves to feed the pods so that they can bloom and produce the duplicate.
Maybe they suck out your DNA or something and that's how they copy you and your
memories. The bottom line is you can sleep. Just don't got to bed in your
garden. The people in this movie were so stupid. Why did they take all their
naps in the grass and near the "mysterious pretty flowers"? At the very least,
why not sleep in shifts? Here's another beef. Memo to Sutherland: if you are
trying to avoid all these pod people that know who you are, then a good place
to hide is probably not where you work. This guy has the entire Bay area to
hide in from his pursuers and he goes to work and is like hiding under a table
or something! Good idea! Couldn't you make it back to your house to hide? Guess
what? They find him at work! No! Yes! Can you believe it? What do you expect
from a guy with a Mike Brady perm? Another slight complaint that we will not
cover in depth is that Sutherland happens upon the big nursery for these pod
things (but they seem to grow in the wild and in everyone's gardens pretty
well, so how big a deal is the nursery?) and his big plan is to destroy the
entire operation with an ax. I guess we need to remember that he's used to
picking rat turds out of soup. You get your choice with this DVD. On one side is the widescreen version while
on the other side is the full frame version (who would ever watch that?). You
get pretty extensive notes about the history of the franchise and its impact on
pop culture. They throw in a theatrical trailer and you also get audio
commentary by Philip Kaufman who directed this film. All in all, it's a very
effective end of the world movie that plays upon modern fears of losing one's
identity to the teeming unknown masses, though we all eat at the same fast food
joints, wear the same clothes and watch the same TV shows, so we're already pod
people. This film also makes a nice bookend to the original. There was also
another version made in 1993 that you can probably skip.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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